


2014

by pendules



Series: project 6 [5]
Category: Football RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-23
Updated: 2014-04-23
Packaged: 2018-01-20 12:13:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1510043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pendules/pseuds/pendules
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU. Ten years since Xabi arrived.</p>
            </blockquote>





	2014

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on August 14th, 2008.

2014: August (14th). Ten years.

He never does give up his flat. (He never gives up (on) his home, this place.)

He was never meant to stay.

(And _he_ was (always) meant to leave.)

Ten years (ago).

 

2004: Ten years ago, when they were never supposed to meet (not like this—it would have been twice, three times for the year—different colours— _never_ like _this_ ).

But he stays (like Xabi was never meant to). They do meet (and he never thinks—not for years to come—that this was a fluke, a mistake; it could have easily never have happened, but it's still not a _coincidence_ , because though it was not fate, it was a _defiance_ of fate—)

Fate—what does it mean?

Something that, to the world, must happen, something that was planned long before it had to occur, something that could not be changed—

—but he defied fate ( _and so did you_ )—

Or there is no such thing as fate in this, in their lives.

In football. Football is the exception—everyone must live and die, but football (is much more important than that) outlives them all. Never to die.

(Faith, _faith_ outlives all. (Love—))

And Steven finds this out in the summer of '04 when his heart tells him what to do.

 

Steven learns that people never really change (and because of this, others might be hurt, but nothing can be done about it) while Xabi learns he can—he can learn to love this.

 

Steven learns some things you love forever—from the time you are born to your death—and some things you learn to love—but they are equal in magnitude, in intensity, these two loves.

(And Xabi was never meant to stay—)

 

2014: There is a gold medal juxtaposed with a silver one in a place only he and a few others will ever see. And they represent two years, two years apart. He sometimes takes the gold out...and the silver, and Stevie would frown if he knew that. ( _If you're first, you're first; if you're second, you're nothing._ *) But, of course, he never will. And he never did. But Xabi, he'd always known what was best for _him_ (best for everyone else)—and not always himself.

 

2005: After May. And another year after he made a decision without a clear reason (because one reason, one was never enough—there were, are, _thousands_ ). He thinks, though, now, if he had to name one, _one_. (One thing he said, one thing he did. That _goal._ ( _El empate._ ) Without even thinking about it and yet completely unsurprisingly to himself, leaving equates with leaving Xabi, staying means staying for Xabi. The two loves are the same now, and he realises how similar they really are. He's always been simple, but he's always gone for the things that were the greatest, the most inexplicable and intricate.) He might be able to do that. To himself. (Not to _him_. Not to anyone else. Of course, he knows anyway.)

Defiance of fate (going against the odds, doing the unexpected) hurts people (people you love)—and it will again.

( _But this will hurt_ you. He knows this.)

And something else he'd said: _A common misconception is that the right thing must be hard to do. No. Sometimes, the easiest is the right._

Steven remembers (again) before it's too late. He never did need another reason, but he's glad for it.

"Thank you."

"You're welcome."

 

Steven stays (and knows), now, and for all eternity. (He doesn't know: Xabi made a decision then and there too, and when they came calling, two or three years later, there was never an option. He hadn't known then, if it was best for him, if it was the right thing—but he knows it nine years later, and he is sure again—sure like he hasn't really been since he's arrived, since he met him.)

 

2014: He is thirty-two years old, and he's never left his sea. He left one for the other. (And every single waterway, every stream, every river, ever lake and ocean meet each other somewhere, sometime. It's their fate (and they do not defy it).)

Steven's always had his. (But he's never depended on it, never depended on something tangible to lead him back home, to be his direction—he's always defied fate, and he's always had _faith_ —)

But the truth, and what he knows, and knew: They held on to it, to the city and the club, because they couldn't hold on to each other anymore.

(There was always three in this romance, and _once we're here, once we still can call here home (in some way or the other), we will always be linked together, like those streams, and rivers, and seas._ )

 

2008: March. 

_You remind me of what I should hate about myself. Loving you does that. I let other people suffer because I can't love them all, not like this. It was easier before... I thought it was because I couldn't love anything. Not like that. But then there was this, and then there was you... And I've been so selfish. It's killing me._

_But I can't leave it, can't leave here. Though I think... I could leave you. If I tried._

"Steven—"

"It isn't easy. But it's right."

 

Something he's not supposed to remember, but knows it wasn't a dream:

In another hotel room. Steven climbing into his bed after midnight, wrapping his arms around his waist, and pressing his ear against his chest.

 

2014: They meet on a street in the middle of winter, and Steven takes his hand in his for no longer than a moment—and although no one notices and no one recognises them, he pulls him into an alleyway before he hugs him, tucks his nose against his neck and inhales...

He finds a note in his pocket that he's carried around in his wallet for six years, folded eight times, waiting for the right time:

_By never leaving here, I never left you either._

 

And no longer on different sides of the same pillow, or the same bed, or the same room—but different sides of a city.

—but, and they know, it's almost as close.

Xabi closes his eyes, and thinks about that first medal (the gold—the only one Steven wants to remember—but he still can't forget the other, the _others_ —the ones that were not to be—and was _this_ to be?), and a time when there was nothing between them but skin, and lips, and red, red shirts.

He sleeps in an empty bed, but retreats to the right side of it.  
Steven, a city away, sleeps on the left (and tonight, no one else is in his bed either).

The lights go off simultaneously.  
(—and they dream of the nights when they never went out at all.)

**Author's Note:**

> *Bill Shankly said that.


End file.
